Divine drag queen ursula movies3/13/2024 “Howard looked through all the designs and focused on that one,” Minkoff recalled Musker telling him at the time. But all of the accounts include the flash-in-the-pan moment when a young illustrator, Rob Minkoff, came up with a vampy, mascaraed matron. In some accounts, the animators working on the film were having a particularly tough time finding the right look for their antagonist, who was originally modeled after a certain sharp-tongued “Dynasty” matron. There’s plenty of mythology surrounding how the animated villain of 1989’s “The Little Mermaid,” written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, came to be. He explains how while Ariel has no idea who the Sea Witch is when Ursula starts to sing she definitely does after the rousing Poor Unfortunate Soul tune - better than that, she's also signed over her voice setting up the rest of the story.More than three decades after Ursula, the buxom sea witch of Atlantica, first slithered her way onto the big screen, the underwater mistress of mayhem is back to tempt the seas in the new live-action version of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” In celebration of her return, everyone from comedian Melissa McCarthy, who’s playing the conniving nemesis of King Triton, to film historians, are taking the opportunity to pay tribute to the legendary drag queen who inspired Ursula’s unwholesome ways: Divine. “I see her song as a comedy number and a character number." “Everybody would rather write for Captain Hook than Peter Pan, they’re must more fun I don’t know why," he said. The animator was reassigned Ursula and did about 98 per cent of what you see on screen based off the designs and drawings.Īshman also talks about his love of writing music for the villain in the documentary. The finished animation you see in the film was a culmination of all this work, and Filipino-Japanese-American animator Ruben Aquino's work. Roy Disney had the idea to take footage of an octopus from the old Disney nature film Mysteries of the Deep (1959) as inspiration. Some of the early looks were too glamorous for the villain which was a no-no as the team knew she would have to transform into the beautiful Vanessa to tempt Eric - they needed the contrast.įinally, she became the octopus figure we know and love after storyboard artist, Matthew O'Callaghan, came up with the idea. According to Disney's Animation Research Library, Dan Haskett, who designed Ariel and Belle in Beauty and the Beast, drew up some early looks which were actually inspired by singer Patti LaBelle with fin like hair. Minkoff and the team have also described her as a "Miami Beach matron".įun fact, Ursula also went through a few other designs including a manta ray, and a pufferfish. The final design for Ursula was a culmination of work over four years (starting in 1985) with several animators and character designers working together, including Frozen co-director Chris Buck and animator Glen Keane.Īshman's influence is also clear as Ursula went from a tall Joan Collins lookalike to the half-octopus version of Divine the drag queen. When you see Divine in action, the echoes of her movements and personality also become clear. If you see Ursula alongside Divine the similarity is clear - her wide smile, the hair and the way she holds herself. Glen Keane's design for Ursula Disney Animation
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